“Back home”

23Sep

It’s every Filipinos’ “dream” to return back home alter spending some years outside of it. Definitely, back home, is the Philippines. There is no other “place” like “home”, we would usually say. And it is true. There is nothing more authentic than a “balut” being eaten back home. There is nothing more delicious than the “mangoes”, the “pancit”, the adobo, the kare-kare, the “bulalo” and many other food, than what we have back home.

You wouldn’t experience as much traffic in another country than what there is to experience in the Philippines. You wouldn’t see as many public transportation in other countries than what you can find in the Philippines. We have jeepneys, buses, MMRT,“trikes”, “kalesa” (see kalesa photo below), bicycles, “kariton”(see below image) and of course the taxis, trucks, cars, trolleys…etc. Our Philippines is a combination of modernity on one side and rural on the other side. And this difference is just kilometres if not merely a few meters away. Makati Cityis a concrete example of a modern city with rural areas.

Kalesa

Kariton

The Philippines has all the “ingredients” you can find in a country to make it exciting, interesting, curious and to see “things happening un-expectedly”. We are unique. We receive typhoons like no other country in the world does. We get earthquakes at any given time of the year. We have volcanoes, natural springs, thousands of uninhabited islands that can house the almost 100 millions Filipinos without any problem at all. We have a huge amount of natural resources to tap for the needs of the Filipinos.

We “start” Christmas season when the month ending in “ber” begins. We jam-pack the Churches on Sundays. As much as aficionados of “cock fighting” fill up the “sabungan” halls on Sundays as well. What about the markets? They’re open 16 hours a day. MacDonald’s serve breakfast as early at 6 AM. Kentucky Fried Chicken faces competition with Max’s Fried Chicken. And the “lechon”? Where have you seen pigs being roasted along the road.

The are quite a number of things to say that we end up murmuring to ourselves “only in the Philippines”. It’s true, we are unique, tremendously exciting and interesting country that every Filipino should be proud of. But a lot cannot resist the call of the “outside world”, so they venture to seek for a better “place to live in”. Contradictory isn’t it, that many Filipinos living outside of the Philippines say “there is no better place like home”. Ironic as it may seem, but that irony is the reality. There is no better place like home, but only up to some extent. Because we are being denied of that opportunity to really feel being at “home”. To the 11 million Filipinos that “home” is located outside, and they have already believed it to be.

True enough, there could be no “better place like home”, but let us face it, if that “home” can provide you with the needs to “live better”, then it shall truly be a “home”, otherwise, it will just remain as a simple adage, a simple saying, a simple quotation, with no meaning and content, but, some letters of the alphabet.